Gib Masters 1-6: Praggnanandhaa topples Topalov

17-year-old Russian Grandmaster Andrey Esipenko beat Ivan
Cheparinov in Round 6 of the Gibraltar Masters to take the sole lead, but he’s
closely followed by a wave of young grandmasters including former World Junior
Champions Mikhail Antipov and Parham Maghsoodloo. 14-year-old Praggnanandhaa
suffered a shock loss in Round 1, but stormed back with 5 wins in a row,
including against former World Champion Veselin Topalov. Top seeds Maxime
Vachier-Lagrave and Shakhriyar Mameydarov are yet to get into top gear.

14-year-old Praggnanandhaa won a great game against ex-World Champion Topalov | photo: John Saunders, official website

You can replay all the games from the 2020 Gibraltar Masters
using the selector below:

This year’s Gibraltar Masters is somewhat paradoxical, since
the already generous top prizes have been boosted from £25,000 to £30,000
overall, and £15,000 to £20,000 for the top woman, but the field is somewhat
weaker. In 2018 there were 12 2700 players, including Levon Aronian, Hikaru
Nakamura and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, in 2019 there were 14, including Aronian,
Nakamura, MVL and So, while this year there are 7 2700 players, with Maxime
Vachier-Lagrave and Shakhriyar Mamedyarov the two absolutely top level stars. It’s
notable that Aronian and Nakamura have this year skipped both Wijk aan Zee
and Gibraltar.

The great Vassily Ivanchuk is back on the rock | photo: Niki Riga, official website

It’s still a wonderful field, however, and includes two
Candidates, Wang Hao and Kirill Alekseenko, former World Champion Veselin
Topalov, everyone’s favourite Vassily Ivanchuk and a host of top juniors and
female players.

The Lawrence Trent show

The Gibraltar Masters is a traditional open with a wide
range of players, so that the early rounds tend to be light on really top-level
clashes and other players can grab the limelight. One of those is English
International Master Lawrence Trent, who asked in the chess24 Tata Steel Chess
chat what he should do in the first round, where he could expect to meet a
monster. Jan Gustafsson’s advice was to take a bye (all players can take one
half-point bye in Rounds 1-7 and still be able to win prizes) and face an easier
opponent in the second round. Lawrence recklessly rejected that advice, and
although he put up stiff resistance he eventually fell to the sweet 41.a4!! final move in this position by Vietnamese no. 1 Le Quang Liem:

The curiosity was that the first game Magnus Carlsen showed
in his new Attacking
without Sacrificing series, published a day earlier, featured the
World Champion showing the same “very typical counterattacking
motif”, this time from the black side:

It’s hard to play like a genius every day and Lawrence went
on to lose his next two games, but even when he’s not playing he’s inspiring
others such as Baskaran “the Beast” Adhiban! In Round 6 Adhiban crushed French
GM Gabriel Flom, who had earlier had Maxime
Vachier-Lagrave on the ropes, in
26 moves. After the game Adhiban gave an unexpected answer when interviewed by Tania Sachdev:

Adhiban: I really
wanted to win today and I was feeling quite motivated.

Tania:What was your
motivation today for winning?

Adhiban: I saw some videos of Lawrence Trent in chess24!

On the opening days we once again got a Gibraltar speciality
– rapid-fire questions directed at many of the top players…

…some curious incidents such as a one-hour power cut in
Round 3 that may have had something to do with 9 draws on the top 10 boards…

Suddenly the lighting was a lot more intimate! | photo: John Saunders, official website

…and the famous Battle of the Sexes, where the men could have
won a Darwin Award for the way they played the first game…

…but overall it was relatively quiet. Then mayhem was
unleashed in Round 6, which had enough dramatic moments for a whole tournament.

Round 6: Blunders and brilliancies

Praggnanandhaa is perhaps the best known of the new wave of Indian talent | photo: John Saunders, official website

The star of Round 6 was 14-year-old Indian Grandmaster
Praggnandhaa, who had suffered a
shock loss in Round 1 to his 2312 rated compatriot WIM Nandhidhaa. He shrugged
that off by winning his next four games, and then in Round 6 he faced
former World Champion Veselin Topalov. The Bulgarian played the French
Defence and seemed to underestimate the strength of his opponent’s plan with
15.f5! until 22…Qd8? was the point of no return (22…Kh8 had to be tried, though
it’s still a very tough position for Black):

Here Praggnandhaa unleashed 23.Nf6+!! gxf6 24.Rad1! and
Black is helpless against the various mating threats. Topalov gave up his queen with 24…Nxe5 25.Rxd8 Rfxd8 26.Qxf6
Ng6 but although the material count is roughly equal the young Indian went on
to score an easy win by pushing his kingside pawns.

33.Be5! would instead have wrapped up victory, but a minute after
Maxime made his rook move he realised that he’d blundered. He’d “hallucinated”
a mating net, while after 33…Kxd4! he couldn’t see anything more than a draw.
Luckily for Maxime, however, his opponent had the same hallucination and
resigned anyway!

The prize for the trap of the day goes to Georgian GM Bela
Khotenashvili, who was kicking herself for getting down to under 2 minutes on
the clock after 20 moves against
French GM Jules Moussard. In the end it worked out perfectly, however, when
she played 36.Kf1! with 18 seconds to spare and Jules, with 47 minutes on his
clock, took just 22 seconds to play 36…Rd2??

What had he missed? 37.Rxg5! hxg5 38.Bd3! and suddenly the
rook has no way of getting back to stop the white h-pawn – if 38…Rd1+ White simply replies
39.Kg2. In the game Jules resigned after 38…c5 39.Ke1.

Only two players have been sole leaders in this year’s
Gibraltar Masters – Ivan Cheparinov after Round 4, and now 17-year-old Russian
Andrey Esipenko, who beat him in Round 6. It was a
long grind of a game, but the final position after Andrey’s 51…c4! is one
of the most beautiful zugzwangs you’re likely to see!

Just try to make a move for White! Understandably,
Cheparinov resigned.

Andrey Esipenko took down Ivan Cheparinov | photo: John Saunders, official website

Statistics

Marketing

Using chess24 requires the storage of some personal data, as set out below. You can find additional information in our Cookie Policy, Privacy Policy, Disclaimer and Terms of Website Use. Please note that your data settings can be changed at any time by clicking on the Data Settings link in the footer at the bottom of our website.

Necessary Data

Some data is technically necessary to be able to visit the page at all. A so-called cookie stores identifiers that make it possible to respond to your individual requests. It contains a session ID - a unique, anonymous user ID combined with an authentication identifier (user_data). A security identifier (csrf) is also stored to prevent a particular type of online attack. All of these fields are alpha-numeric, with almost no relation to your real identity. The only exception is that we monitor some requests with the IP address that you are currently using, so that we are able to detect malicious use or system defects. Additionally, a technical field is stored (singletab) to ensure that some interactions are only processed in the browser tab that is currently active. For example, a new chess game will not be opened in all your current tabs. We use your local storage to save the difference between your local clock and our server time (serverUserTimeOffset), so that we are able to display the date and time of events correctly for you. We measure how our page is used with Google Analytics so that we can decide which features to implement next and how to optimize our user experience. Google stores your device identifiers and we send tracking events (such as page requests) to Google Analytics. These have no direct relationship to your person except for the IP address currently being used and your Google Analytics identifiers.
You can also enable more data fields, as described in the other sections. Your personal decision on which data storage to enable is also stored as necessary information (consent).

Settings Data

We offer a range of personal settings for your convenience. Options include which opponents you prefer to be paired against, your preferred chessboard and pieces, the board size, the volume setting of the video player, your preferred language, whether to show chat or chess notation, and more. You can use our web page without storing this data, but if you would like to have your individual settings remembered we recommend enabling this feature. For logged-in registered users this setting is mandatory to store information about your privacy settings, users you have blocked and your friendship settings. As a registered user we also store your data consent in these settings.

Social Media Data

We embed a Twitter feed showing activity for the hashtag #c24live and also make it possible to share content in social networks such as Facebook and Twitter. If you enable this option social networks are able to store data in your cookies or local storage for the purpose of these features.

Statistics Data

Enable this feature to allow us to gather more individual measurements and statistics, so that we can make better decisions about which content and features are important to you and should be a priority to improve.

Marketing Data

To help cover the cost of free services we would like to show you advertisements from our partner networks. Members of these networks store data on the banners shown to you and try to deliver ads that are relevant. If you choose not to allow this kind of data we have to show more anonymous advertisements and will be more limited in the free services we can offer. We use Google services to display ads. You can find details on how your data is handled here: https://policies.google.com/technologies/ads

Other Data

For registered users we store additional information such as profile data, chess games played, your chess analysis sessions, forum posts, chat and messages, your friends and blocked users, and items and subscriptions you have purchased. You can find this information in your personal profile. A free registration is not required to use this application. If you decide to contact the support team a ticket is created with information that includes your name and email address so that we can respond to your concern. This data is processed in the external service Zendesk. If you subscribe to a newsletter or are registered we would like to send you occasional updates via email. You can unsubscribe from newsletters and as a registered user you can apply several mail settings to control how your email address is used. For newsletters we transfer your email address and username to the external service MailChimp. If you buy content or subscriptions on chess24 we work with the payment service provider Adyen, which collects your payment data and processes information about the payment such as fraud protection data.